i will not be suffocated by your ignorance

Carnival is woman. What if women refused to show up for carnival?

I have written previously about being a 16-year-old girl at a school fair when a grown-ass man burnt me with his cigarette because I refused to dance with him.

I my teens I watched the colour drain from a friend’s face as we walked along Spring Garden in the thick Kadooment Day crowd. A man had sexually assaulted her as he casually walked by.

In my early twenties I was stung on the buttocks multiple time by a popular-for-the-season calypsonian in full view of security who only told him to “cool out” after I pleaded with them to do something.

Security at fetes is meant to keep men safe. Security guards will break up fights between men. I’m yet to see them intervene when women are being obviously harassed or assaulted.

There is a video of a fat, black Caribbean woman being sexually assaulted and stripped by a group of men…